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Forum : White hunter, green heart – Fred Pearce finds that hunting may have a place in preserving Kenya’s wildlife

By Fred Pearce

HERE is a contradiction. Kenya has the toughest anti-hunting laws in Africa,
but the past twenty years has seen its wild animal population halved. One
district has escaped the carnage. In Laikipia, a plateau the size of Wales,
farmers have a licence to cull animals for meat—and the game is
returning.

Confused? You shouldn’t be. Out here in the bush, wildlife is limited not by
the gun but by competing demands for land. People will only leave space for
animals if they pay their way. Of course, that need not mean killing, as Morias
Kisio explained while we sipped drinks on the veranda of the Ilngwesi tourist
lodge, owned and run by Masai cattle herders. Kisio is secretary of the lodge,
which charges £120 for a luxury en suite night in the open air. It seemed
worth every penny. Somewhere below us, a hundred-strong herd of elephants was on
its way to Mount Kenya. A leopard prowled nearby.

“Before we had the lodge, we depended entirely on livestock and wild animals
were our enemies,” Morias said. “Now we can milk the elephants as well as our
cattle. And we can afford to send our children to schools.”

Over the hill, former hunter Ian Craig runs a private game reserve on what
used to be a cattle ranch. The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy has brought rhinos back
to the Lewa Downs, which now host more than 200 giraffes and a sixth of the
world’s 3000 Grevy’s zebras. With 250 staff, it is the largest private employer
in eastern Kenya.

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“There are big commercial opportunities utilising wildlife here,” says Craig.
These include tourist lodges and camel tours, meat from culls and sales to zoos.
The going rate for a live reticulated giraffe is &dollar;10 000. Laikipia today
has more elephants than Amboseli National Park, says James Munyugi of the Kenyan
Wildlife Service (KWS), which is increasingly looking to private landowners to
maintain the country’s fauna and divert tourists from the overloaded national
parks.

Craig and Munyugi have helped to develop the Ilngwesi tourist lodge and the
Laikipia Wildlife Forum, an alliance of farmers, ranchers, herdsmen and others
dedicated to enhancing the value of wildlife. “The benefits are not just
financial,” says Craig, “they are about security for the whole area. Through the
forum, people here now have radio links and access to aircraft.”

Mike Dyer, owner of nearby Borana ranch, sees Laikipia as a model for the
“use it or lose it” approach to conservation. He flies me in his decrepit bush
plane over the ancient Mukogodo Forest, which borders his land. “It is still
unspoiled. But if people see no value in the forest for wildlife, the logging
companies will soon move in,” he says.

But here’s the rub. For Dyer and Craig, the Masai and the KWS, the real
profit from wildlife would come from hunting. Legislation going through the
Kenyan parliament would allow ministers to license commercial hunting for the
first time in a generation. And with political unrest and El Niño floods
over the past year disrupting the mainstream tourist business, the pressure
grows for the return of hunters, who will pay tens of thousands of dollars each
per trip.

Supporters say hunting would be restricted to abundant animals, many of
which, like giraffes and zebras, are already being culled to keep numbers down
or protect livestock and humans. On average, 60 lions are killed each year in
Laikipia to protect people.

“Hunting would only be allowed in a few places and it would need tight
controls,” says Dyer. “We don’t want hunters getting out of hand as they have in
Tanzania, with night-time hunting from cars with spotlights.

There are risks, of course. The law of the gun could take hold. Last year,
for the first time in a decade, Craig’s park rangers clashed with armed rhino
poachers. But hunting cash could also buy security.

The truth seems inescapable. If Kenya is serious about protecting its
wildlife then trophy-hunting will be vital to making wildlife a profitable
commodity. Use it or lose it. Roll on the return of the tourist hunter.